Foolish Nothingness

You sit there in judgement and call me a fool. You tell me that my people are nothing, that we will amount to nothing and that I should be ashamed of who I am. You tell me that I am weak, that I have weak blood in my veins. You say my heritage and my gender conspired against me.

I say who died and made you god?

Of course, if I had control of history, I would prefer a version in which my ancestors are treated as equals, as humans. I am not fond of the version in which we were captured and subdued like dull-minded animals. I do not celebrate the fact that our official language is one that we were required to adopt from a mother who was forced onto us. I would have preferred to type in my father’s tongue with the fluency of the ancients. However, the [ugly] truth is they came, the conquered and destroyed. Worse still, they actually thought that they were helping us by forcing us to abandon our history and adopt their future. I am not proud of the mess they made of my people. However, I will not cower in shame and hide my face from the sun. You are not the sun. The fact that your land speaks its own tongue or that you were not captured and tortured by fellow beings does not make you brighter than I am. You are not the light to my shadow. I will not be ashamed.

You mock my daily efforts to pave my own path. You say that I cannot survive in this cruel harsh world. Your own daily routine could rival a sluggish snail. You tire merely at the pointing of fingers and shouting of instructions. The very act of being awake exhausts you. Yet, you mock my vigour and charisma. You claim I will soon be as spent and as useless as you are. I am glad that our paths are different. I am glad that I will not follow yours. I will build my own dream and live it out in my own way. I am glad.

When I speak of the hopes and dreams I have; of wishes I bear to change my people’s fate, you laugh and mock my ambition. You say the system is rigged for me to fail. For the system to survive, you say, it must stand on great broad, manly shoulders. My feeble bones and soft flesh cannot withstand the responsibility of its weight. You do not know my strength or my fire. You do not know of the men and women folk that I descend from. You do not know of my determination or my gusto. You do not know my journey or my story. You do not know. Therefore, I forgive your ignorance.